secret-handling

Rules for handling secrets such as passwords and access tokens in agent-managed repositories.

In plain words
What is it for?
It tells agents which secret files not to read and points them to safe alternatives such as example configuration files and documentation.
Why use it?
It prevents credentials from being exposed by reading environment files or copying secrets into committed project records.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alonf/mcppythondemo/secret-handling
Any agent
npx skills add alonf/MCPPythonDemo --skill secret-handling
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alonf/MCPPythonDemo

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 19 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,016 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00019 $0.02016
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.01008
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00403
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00202

Measured yesterday against content hash 1822de996ac9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

secret-handling scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to secret-handling — 400 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.squad/templates/skills/secret-handling/SKILL.md · 201 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 201 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Context

Spawned agents have read access to the entire repository, including .env files containing live credentials. If an agent reads secrets and writes them to .squad/ files (decisions, logs, history), Scribe auto-commits them to git, exposing them in remote history. This skill codifies absolute prohibitions and safe alternatives.

Patterns

Prohibited File Reads

NEVER read these files:

  • .env (production secrets)
  • .env.local (local dev secrets)
  • .env.production (production environment)
  • .env.development (development environment)
  • .env.staging (staging environment)
  • .env.test (test environment with real credentials)
  • Any file matching .env.* UNLESS explicitly allowed (see below)

Allowed alternatives:

  • .env.example (safe — contains placeholder values, no real secrets)
  • .env.sample (safe — documentation template)
  • .env.template (safe — schema/structure reference)

If you need config info:

  1. Ask the user directly — "What's the database connection string?"
  2. Read .env.example — shows structure without exposing secrets
  3. Read documentation — check README.md, docs/, config guides

NEVER assume you can "just peek at .env to understand the schema." Use .env.example or ask.

Prohibited Output Patterns

NEVER write these to .squad/ files:

Pattern Type Examples Regex Pattern (for scanning)
API Keys OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-proj-..., GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_... `[A-Z_]+(?:KEY
Passwords DB_PASSWORD=super_secret_123, password: "..." `(?:PASSWORD
Connection Strings postgres://user:pass@host:5432/db, Server=...;Password=... `(?:postgres
JWT Tokens eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9... eyJ[A-Za-z0-9_-]+\.eyJ[A-Za-z0-9_-]+\.[A-Za-z0-9_-]+
Private Keys -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----, -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- -----BEGIN [A-Z ]+PRIVATE KEY-----
AWS Credentials AKIA..., aws_secret_access_key=... `AKIA[0-9A-Z]{16}
Email Addresses [email protected] (PII violation per team decision) [a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}

Read the full file on GitHub · 201 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 201 lines · 19 tokens per session scan A 1822de996ac9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

secret-handling is a skill published in the GitHub repository alonf/MCPPythonDemo (0 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 2,016 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to secret-handling, differing in 400 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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